17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Nice Summary with Good Artwork, August 12, 2007
This review is from: Imperial Japanese Navy Submarines 1941-45 (New Vanguard) (Paperback)
Mark Stille's Imperial Japanese Navy Submarines 1941-45, No. 135 in Osprey's New Vanguard series, nicely summarizes the role of those oft-neglected submarines in the Second World War. Up front, the author defines his focus, concentrating on the I-boats and RO-boats that carried the main effort in the war. While this volume might have had just a tad bit more analysis, it is quite a bit better than the earlier Osprey volume on U.S. submarines and is well worth the cost. Furthermore, the excellent artwork provides a nice value-added dimension to this volume.
Imperial Japanese Navy Submarines 1941-45 starts with a brief 2-page introduction on the origins of the Japanese submarine force, then discusses how they were designed to support Japan's `decisive battle' strategy against the United States. Unlike other navies, the Japanese submarine doctrine oriented their submarines toward long-range anti-surface warfare missions, rather than anti-commerce. Even before the war, as the author notes, Japanese exercises indicated that this doctrine just didn't work, but the Japanese Navy stuck with it and essentially wasted much of their submarine effort in the war. The heart of this volume is about 30 pages that provide capsule details on each class of Japanese submarine, including technical characteristics, numbers built and wartime career. These are short, but very good and enhance the reference value of this volume. The author also provides a short 2-page post-mortem on why Japan's submarine force was a failure.
The color plates in this volume include Japanese fleet submarines (I-53, I-68 and I-176); cruiser submarines (I-1, I-8, I-9); "monster" submarines I-14 and I-401; a cutaway of the B-1 type submarine I-35; RO-type submarines RO-61, RO-46 and RO-106; I-25 launching its floatplane to attack the Oregon coast and Kaiten carriers. This volume could have used a summary table listing the top-scoring Japanese submarines in the war, detailing the sub's captain and number of ships/tonnage sunk (which is generally provided for the U.S. and German submarine top-scorers in World War 2), as well as more information on submarine commanders. A summary of total boats built during war and losses per year would also have been nice. Obviously space constraints were tight, but the author succeeded in packing a good amount of information into this short volume.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A must-read for submarine enthusiasts, August 16, 2008
This review is from: Imperial Japanese Navy Submarines 1941-45 (New Vanguard) (Paperback)
While there is a lot of information that has been written or otherwise produced about American submarines in World War 2, there is a surprising lack of information about Japanese submarines. For instance, the first shots of WW2 were fired by an American destroyer at a Japanese mini-sub in Hawaiian waters just prior to the Japanese attack; Japanese submarines were engaging in coastal attacks on the US' west coast; and the Japanese and Germans were exchanging war materials and research items via submarine (this was how the Germans were helping the Japanese get their atomic bomb information).
This book is an excellent source of information to fill that gap. It describes the various classes and unique submarines of the Japanese navy, with excellent illustrations (both photographs and paintings) throughout the book. The strategy that the Japanese navy used when employing them is also mentioned, along with the weapons the submarines used.
I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in either World War Two or submarines in general.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Handy reference, July 22, 2008
This review is from: Imperial Japanese Navy Submarines 1941-45 (New Vanguard) (Paperback)
This booklet is a quick guide to the major IJN submarine types of WW2. Nice color plates and basic information. I definitely recommend it.
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